After ten years
of pushing rural broadband infrastructure, there is a need to reassess how well
existing infrastructure has been adopted and utilized and to understand the
psycho-social barriers that have been identified and how to implement new
social engineering strategies and metrics focused on the desired genuine
outcomes. Future infrastructure investment depends heavily on the return on
investment and whether citizens are able to realize the promised benefits.

We share a mutual
interest in establishing an entity for ongoing gathering and dissemination on
broadband training best practices with emphasis on ongoing mining of bottom-up
innovations, developing train-the-trainer programs for local peer mediated
skills transfer, and creating socio-economic capacity-building metrics based on
the most effective peer mediated skills transfer dynamics.

In recent years
we’ve seen an explosion of billion dollar social media business success stories
and at the same time confusion regarding the promise of broadband resulting in
disappointing take-up rates in rural and Native communities. The economic
decline continues and the need for a new form of community education and
fast-track action plan is growing dramatically.

The First Step Forward
is developing programs to help rural and tribal leaders understand the
importance of their advocacy for, and understanding of, the best practical sustainable
broadband applications.

The Second Step
is developing self-directed online training to engage learners in cost-effective
utilization of key online resources.

The Third Step
is disseminating existing bottom up innovations and stimulating more such innovations.

Community coaching
services are needed to advise communities on their specific
opportunities to leverage local broadband intelligently to minimize costs and
maximize the benefits. Leading with how local people can help one another
online to establish successful dynamics for skills transfer and mentoring can
evolve toward the creation of for-profit knowledge age service businesses. Instructional
entrepreneurship in an age of accelerating change meets a community education
need beyond the offerings of higher education and K12 institutions.

The viral (rapid) growth
of MySpace is significant because properly motivated by the opportunity to
express oneself online and to engage with peers, 100 million teens in only 18
months created the equivalent of the 8th largest country on Earth.
The significance for grassroots leadership able to articulate an authentic
vision and action plan for meaningful transnational mass engagement is profound
mobilization is indeed possible.

A seat at the United
Nations for future virtual nations is conceivable, particularly once
transnational activism translates into action initiatives regarding
socio-economic capacity-building, environmental, and cultural issues. Global
Service Learning projects have unlimited potential and may prove to be the only
way to meet the huge demands for mass education and collaboration to create a
trusted global information society and economy.

Managing
the Blossoming Potential
for Everyone both Learner and Teacher, all the time.

The time has come for
online learning for everyone, as both learner and teacher.

The recent phenomena of
Web 2.0 has produced a global proliferation of bottom-up innovations,
particularly regarding the use of new powerful free Web 2.0 tools for the
creation and sharing of peer content for special interest groups. What is emerging
is the opportunity for peer-mediated skills transfer on a scale never before
possible. The vision that needs to be recognized is that anyone can learn to
teach others online and make a significant difference in the lives of
potentially many, many others, anywhere, anytime. Those of us without necessary
information and service retrieval skills will need access to someone we can
rely on for essential assistance.

We are entering an age
of unprecedented opportunities for mass innovation and action based on shared
values and online learning. Everyone both learner and teacher, both consumer
and producer, all the time.

1.Establish
a dynamic clearinghouse of the best bottom-up innovations,
most effective online tools with tutorials, online learning modules and
courses, and peer mentoring matching services. New peer created video and
screencasting tutorials are proving far more educationally effective for a much
broader range of learners than text-only tutorials.

2.Developing
a skills transfer metrics methodology to document those who
are most effective transferring skills in a motivated time-sensitive manner
with emphasis on how many skills to how many people and how quickly can become
a major motivator to help others learn. Rewarding those volunteers who are most
effective transferring skills with an online social recognition dynamic is
fundamental to counter champion burnout as well as to showcase best
practices.

3.Extensibility:
Now that one person’s efforts can create online teaching resources potentially
effective for an unlimited number of persons, the best such resources need to
be continually peer-evaluated and effectively disseminated. Teaching how an
individual can have a global impact suggests developing a
global citizenship curriculum and many related initiatives.

4.Online
mentoring and encouragement of those who lack confidence in
self-directed learning is a teachable dynamic than produces huge satisfaction
for both mentor and mentee. The use by mentors of established self-directed
online lessons allows them to focus on the dynamics for providing emotional
support in a mastery learning format to create confident self-directed learners
– has been proven effective. With the global teacher shortage, this is our
best option.

5.Community
coaching of local leaders in their successively greater
local applications of Web 2.0 skills transfer for growing measurable
socio-economic capacity is quickly evolving. Creating a community of
communities which allows communities to view online their peer communities’
innovations can accelerate the pace of local innovation.

6.Confident
Predictions for What is Next:Youth
E-entrepreneurship with emphasis in efficient online skills transfer and
participation in the global economy has the potential to grow a global
entrepreneurial culture in less than ten years. Half the global population
is under the age of 20.

7.Articulating
the vision for an initiative which can focus the activity of
hundreds of millions of individuals toward positive global change, and creating
a global citizenship worldview, is not only viable, it is inevitable. Just as
100 million youth made MySpace a 2.6 billion business with 18 months, so can
more purposeful initiatives grow exponentially faster and greater. It is
just a matter of who and when. Global transnational service learning projects
are quickly evolving.

3. Clearinghouse of
Best Practices, distinction between top down, middle
ground, bottom up. Distinguish between best uses of successive mediums both
existing and projected as customized to needed of community specifics
culturally, literacy rates, economic bases, and development levels.

AIHEC
Opportunities for LeadershipMajor
telco mergers combined with a recent 20 billion dollar FCC spectrum auction and
other technological advances have created an immediate need to understand how
to overcome rural take-up rate barriers. In addition, oil prices are forcing
the issue of creating more mainstream telework adoption, and online shopping
for rural citizens instead of driving long distances just makes sense. Add the
global competitiveness issue, the boom in bottom-up innovations worldwide, and
America’s challenge appears to be how best to stimulate more homegrown American
innovation.

Motivating
learners to build their own knowledge. Constructivism refers to learners
building their own knowledge. Social media trends demonstrate young learners
being self-directed and building their own knowledge as well as peer
communities and contributing to the skill development of peers and
participating in supporting causes in a growing number of meaningful ways.

Creating
meaning, self and group identity via acquiring new knowledge and
collaborations is in many ways very much a tribal dynamic. Online social
networking has vast potential for all generations, and seniors are the fastest
growing online demographic. Recognition of the online medium as a cost
effective means for online education and provision of social services and
essential information as well as social support is now being broadly accepted.

Creating
community learning networks to build local socio-cultural capacity is the
opportunity of AIHEC and community education advocates. How online education
for all tribal citizens can help support local needs at all levels as
culturally appropriate will include new cultural behaviors by its very nature
as a new communications medium. Applications will be reinvented within the
cultural context of each community and tribe.

1.AIHEC can begin
by articulating a community e-learning healthy village vision addressing the
nine essential components of a healthy village that can be empowered by
intelligent use of Internet. http://lone-eagles.com/healthyvillage.htm

2.Advocate online
education for all via reinventing social networks, with global voice for
cultural expression.

3.Take on the
mission of authenticating and disseminating indigenous best practices

4.In a very real
sense “higher education” today doesn’t exclude those not pursuing post
secondary education, but is just the reverse – Phds may well be People Helping
make a Difference, online and offline. We need to recognize those with global
knowledge retrieval skills as community assets and create mentor rosters as a
new form of service learning. Reconnecting the 50% of tribal members who live
off-reservation in meaningful ways is quite viable.

5.Identifying new
community action dynamics by sharing stories of community success stories, new
content and related socio-cultural innovations can stimulate other communities
to reconsider their opportunities and responsibility for leading local change.

Viability in the
modern day requires knowing how and where to find the information you need on a
daily basis and those without the skills will need to know who locally to go to
for assistance.

Online mentoring
and services open a dramatic new spectrum of viable opportunities for
supporting those in rural and remote locations, or those in urban communities
who are socially isolated.

6.Creating global
transnational service learning projects as part of mining the best bottom-up
innovations of others world wide is but one example of new win-win
opportunities.

7.Best practices
need to be separated as those demonstrated by top-down initiatives, such as
telcos deploying widespread broadband, and by mid-level dynamics such as a
community organizations rallying to integrate broadband intelligently throughout
local community organizations to create a healthy village and a smart
community, and bottom-up individuals seeking home-based self-employment and
other specific benefits.

8.Demonstrating
U.S. Native responsibility as first to have these abilities – to lead in
sharing the vision and best practices with all indigenous persons.

9.World Values
Survey and contributing to a Global Trusted community

10.Create a virtual
community of those who opt in to work toward a better world,

11.Conduct mutual
show of support with weekly voting as a self-affirmation dynamic.

New metricscan model the exponential
potential of effective online collaboration, self-actualization, motivational
mentoring and encouragement growing self-esteem and skills capacity in others,
particulary the ability to function as self-directed learners.

New trends
supporting these concepts are social entrepreneurship, citizen philanthropy,
E-entrepreneurship using Internet ecommerce to create micro-multi-nationals
particularly among youth.

NEW METRICS FOR
social recognition programs supporting community education and motivation:

We might recognize and honor:

1.Those
who show initiative to learn and participate and/or support for those who do.

2.Those
who demonstrate self-directed learning skills as a tribal asset.

3.Those
who demonstrate successful encouragement and mentoring of others, online and
offline, with recognition for specific skills transferred and ongoing support.

4.Those
who create local online content and instructional resources such as screencasts
and instructional videos – there is a need for awareness-raising show and tell
for what’s possible once local broadband becomes available.

A Summary of Consistent
Online Learning Leadership and InnovationsOver
the last 25 years, Frank Odasz, president of Lone Eagle Consulting since 1998, has
consistently been an early adapter, prolific online educator/author, and
aggressive innovator. The history of innovations consistently demonstrating
future trends years before they became broadly recognized, speaks for itself.

1994 – Major online
peer mentoring program with science and math educators from a five state area
using a train-the-trainers model with customized online curriculum

1998 – Delivered first
Internet workshops to 11 Alaskan Native villages for educators and community
members, established cross-cultural self-directed Internet guide (print and
online) and custom online curriculum. This Internet Guide as funded by the
AT&T learning network, the ERIC clearinghouse and USAID. Created graduate
online courses for rural educators for the Alaska Staff Development Network and
Alaska Pacific University. Still being actively taught as of July 2008.

2000 rural ecommerce
and telework strategies guides and online lessons developed as part of rural
road show funded by USDA and sponsored by Idaho State Universities College of
Technology Workforce Training office.

2007 – Co-facilitated
formal creation of International Indigenous ICT commission of the Americas in
Antigua, Guatemala.

2008 Wyo ecommerce
support project, Asia Pacific Economic Council

Summary Narrative:In
1988, the creation of the Big Sky Telegraph connecting one-room schools to
share lesson plans produced the first set of online lessons posted by the US
Dept. of Education some seven years later. 1988-1998, training hundreds of
teachers online through open knowledge train-the-trainer online courses, and
sharing extensive resources online without restriction predicated the open
source, open knowledge movement. Frank’s many innovative online and print
training guides were funded by USAID, the AT&T Learning Network, the ERIC
clearinghouse, USDA, and others.

Frank provided the
first Internet workshops for educators in the Alaskan Native villages of the
Yukon Koyukuk school district in 1998, supplemented by online courses and
examples of online cultural multimedia expression.

Rural Ecommerce and
Telework strategies online lessons written for rural learners were created in
2000 and used for a National demonstration project funded by the U.S. Dept. of
Labor with emphasis on individuals with disabilities, (2003-2006).

Served as community
networking resources coordinator for the CTC VISTA project. www.comtechreview.org (See the article
and resources for “Community Networking.”

International
presentations on Indigenous broadband applications have been delivered for the
governments of Mexico, Australia, Jamaica, and 23 nations of the Asia Pacific
Economic Council. March, 2007, Frank facilitated the first formal meeting of
the Indigenous Commission for Communications Technologies in the Americas
(ICCTA) http://www.iccta-citca.org/ENG/home.html

Offering
Presentations on the BIG PICTURE,
and Train-the-Trainer Workshops and Online Training

If your staff is new to
Web 2.0 and you're interested in training presentations and/or online training
perhaps I can be of assistance. I've been teaching teachers online since 1988.
This past Winter I've been focusing on the best Web 2.0 tools for distance
learning. I'm finishing up 3 graduate online credits for KI2 educators for New
Mexico State University "Web 2.0 for K12 Classrooms."

For the last 7 years,
I've been sharing an online rural ecommerce and telework strategies curriculum.
What I would like to do next is establish Native Youth E-entrepreneurship
online training as part of a global citizenship curriculum. I can demonstrate
extensive resources validating this is indeed the future; social entrepreneurship,
global youth microenterprise curriculum, ICT Microloans to create
micro-multi-nationals, citizen philanthropy, and much more.

I enjoy delivering
multimedia presentations that simplify the complex for non-techies. (Rural and
Tribal leaders, etc.) Extensive past presentations and descriptions are
documented at http://lone-eagles.com/new.htm

Show Yourself the
Future of Peer-Mediated Online LearningHere's
a must-do sample five minute activity to demonstrate how anyone, anywhere, any
age can instantly create quality how-to distance learning resources for
peer-mediated skills transfer.

Go to www.screencast-o-matic.com
Click on the Demo - it takes three minutes. Then, click CREATE and select
screen size of 600x800. Anything you show on your screen online and offline and
say into your microphone or webcam will be instantly video captured. Click
STOP, and you'll receive a URL to instantly share your how-to tutorial.
Try it now – do a 1-2 minute self-directed experiment.

Imagine a world where
anyone with a skill can learn to share it globally. Imagine: “From each
according to their ability, to each according to their need. “ Einstein stated
“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”

Search by topic for
existing screencasts on any topic, like moodle. If this was a successful
five minutes for you, imagine what an hour or two might produce in new
capabilities to transfer skills online!

I'm very excited for the potential of next generation youth-driven and
elder-driven social media projects! I'm very interested in dialog on these
topics with anyone who shares this Big Picture Vision.